ThanksYoga

As I mentioned to many I decided to spend Thanksgiving in Joshua Tree National Park with complete strangers for a vegetarian Yoga and Rock Climbing retreat. I may just have to admit that that was the most wonderful way I could imagine to spend Thanksgiving (now if only my lovely family was there).

I arrived the eve of Thanksgiving after a pretty icky drive (I got within 50 miles of LA so of course that didn't help) but had time to pitch my tent before helping out in the makeshift kitchen with the vegetarian feast the kitchen team was set up to prepare. And you may not believe it but it was a huge feast even being vegetarian. We had soup and salad and beans and tofu and innumerable little sides that filled me up just as well as Thanksgiving without the icky food comma that is usually experienced. We went to bed that night underneath the stars and I reveled in the beauty of being able to sleep under the stars at the end of November.

The next day started with some fruit, snacks and hot tea to be enjoyed after retreating to the upper rocks of our campsite so that we could get into the warmth of the rising sun. Very soon though we headed to our morning yoga site where we practiced an hour and a half of yoga before spending 30 minutes learning yogic meditative breathing practices. Then it was on to a delightful breakfast of warm oatmeal, fruit, eggs and all sorts of veggies mixed into it all. Mmm.

After breakfast we hiked to a good rock range where the YogaSlacker team had set up some rock climbing courses. The rest of the day was spent belaying and rock climbing-gosh I loved it! Rock climbing is great because its such a test of both physical and mental problem solving and testing out different ways you can scale a sheer cliff. It was also fun to be part of because of the amazing trust that it requires you to quickly build with new people.

Then we'd finish up the time we had in the sun with some acro yoga, which I LOVE. As in love so much that I'm starting a student organization at UCSD next winter with the intentions of getting enough people together who are trained in it and passionate about it so that I have a good community of people to do it with. Acroyoga is a mixture of acrobatics and yoga that ends up being essentially team yoga-people working together to hold poses or lifting one another and then doing poses. Ha it's hard to explain so why don't you just go and check out http://acroyoga.org. The most important things is that I love it like you wouldn't believe-it's kind of like rockclimbing in that it is a nice mixture of physical and mental in its practice. (the greatest thing was the other night I talked my roommates into trying it out with me and we had a good hour session of trying different poses before going to Golden Spoon for some much needed frozen yogurt).

The nights ended around the campfire with another delicious vegetarian meal, music, and lots of campfire games and stories. Really just a beautiful way to end the day with great new friends and an exhausted body. There were a few people who really enjoyed the acro like I did so we'd ditch the fire for as long as we could stand the cold to do some more acro-yoga work each night. I definitely learned a few really cool poses!

Some cool things about the retreat included that I was the youngest person there by about 7 years (well if you don't count the elementary-school aged boys) and that I was pretty much the only non-certified yoga teacher. Hopefully that last thing is going to change though as I'm really finding yoga to be a passion that I have.

Anyway, the next two days proceeded the same way as the first and were equally as wonderful. A few of the people I was with on the retreat are planning to visit San Diego in the near future so I'm looking forward to hosting them and I have a trip for Tuscon (about 10 of the people at the retreat live there) planned for February, I have a few great places that I can stay!

Yoga is amazing, both physically and mentally and I'm so appreciative of the opportunity to have been able to delve further into it during this retreat!

Untraditional Holidays

I've noticed that this year is one in which I've not yet celebrated a holiday in what we would call a 'traditional' way. And I've decided to commit each holiday for the rest of this year to being the same. What have I been doing instead?

New Years--rather than a big party, my best friend Aliina, myself and Luana decided to cook an enormous amount of food (prime rib, lobster, crab legs, chicken and asparagus crepes, and of course a number of delicious deserts). We barely watched the ball drop because we were still immersed in consuming the delectable dishes we had spent hours preparing (and not slaving away type preparing either, we were dancing and playing games and eating along the way).

Easter--well, in college we really don't celebrate it too much. I don't know that I even recognized easter for the day it was...maybe I went to the beach instead?

4th of July-No fireworks for me because I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and fireworks are banned in national parks. Rather I saw a bunch of cross-dressed mountaineers who lived at the bottom of the canyon parading between a row of tents in their flashy costumes followed by a large white sheet on which 'fireworks' were painted. I'd say hiking to the bottom of the Canyon and back up is a much better way to spend the 4th than barbecuing and watching fireworks (don't get me wrong, I do love fireworks). **pictures in the 4th of july section of blog*

And now for Thanksgiving. Again, I'm not doing the traditional thing with family and a big turkey dinner. Instead I'll be at a Yoga and Rockclimbing retreat in Joshua Tree (a national park in SD county) eating all-vegan meals with a bunch of strangers. Yoga has really developed into one of my passions this year and a friend mentioned this retreat to me so of course I immediately signed up! Here are a few pictures, but I'll have a whole post dedicated to the retreat with a whole great slideshow of pictures, don't you worry!

Christmas this year we celebrated a bit late so that all the family could be there but the traditions kept it from being a non-traditional one.

And now we're here awaiting New Years Eve celebrations (we being me, Aliina, and Luana and here being their house in Cheyenne). We've decided to stay in again and this year's menu includes...

Artichokes

Roast Duck

Lobster

Crab Legs

Homemade potato chips

a Dark Chocolate Bunt

and wine gallore..Gueverstaminer, Sirah, Madeira and much more!

It should be another beautiful night in Cheyenne for the coming of a beautiful New Year!

As for New Years resolutions...I really would like to set them but am not quite sure where to start. While the cooking is occurring I may take some time to sit aside and project my hopes for 2010!

Happy 2010!

How It's All Going

Pictures are: UCSD Student Foundation members at the Chancellors 5k to support student scholarship, on a raft on Mission Bay for 'floatopia' a fun event where you anchor a raft and hang out on the beach, me with a few advisors at the Elen show filming, Professor Popkin explaining peasant villages, sailboat (named Taco Surf), UCDS Asayako drummers at an student org performance, UCSD sit-in protesting state fee increases for educational costs, performance Dean and Britta at the Loft, Ellen Degeneris show came to UCSD and that was the turn out, the microfilms machine that I use to research alumni articles for my 'unoffical history' project

In one word, it's going Incredibly.

I have the most spectacular year going for me so far. It is busier than ever (I didn't believe I could actually get more busy than I was last year, but yes, I have accomplished it) but more wonderful as well. Unfortunately I lost my camera (I believe it's now resting at the bottom of the Pacific somewhere) so the only pictures I can share are those that friends have posted on the ever-reliable Facebook.

PS. Today was an incredible day for me. One of those days that gets started and you can't find a reason to get a smile off of your face. I got SO much done, worked with a number of incredible people, enjoyed my classes, and I just can't help thinking how great of a life I'm living-thank you for being a part of it :)

Here's the Breakdown

School

Just like I guessed it, my classes are spectacular! In Sociology of Food we've now discussed everything from food and sex to obesity and social conceptions of food. The readings that we are doing are always interesting (probably the reason that I'm actually caught up in this class) and we have our midterm coming up on Thursday.

The MOST exciting thing is though, that I just got approved to work on an independent research project with a professor I had last year. I'm going to be PAID to interview all of the top CEO's of innovative companies in San Diego and I might get Published at the end of the study! The Professor, also the Dean of UCSD Extension, does a lot of research and was just awarded a grant to compare UCSD's innovative community with that of Melbourne and Sydney AU. While I don't get to go to Australia, I do get to interview some of the people that made San Diego the incredible hub for innovation that it is today--talk about a Great way to make connections my final year of school! So yes, I'm above the boiling point on the excitement meter on that one :)

As for other classes,

Intro to Acting is also a lot of fun-we have had numerous days where we practice walking in 'neutral position' and even spent half of a class period one day laying on the floor relaxing and, well, meditating. Because the class is small, I've grown close to about half of the members and every day after class we go to the student center to have a drink at the Pub while we talk about just about everything. The best part of this is that we are all very different people but acting has forced us to let down our boundaries so the connections are amazing.

My political science class is hard, and not extremely interesting, but the professor is a riot. If anyone sits in the back two rows of the lecture hall he yells profanities at them until they move, he is constantly doing horrible drawings for the class on the board, and he says some of the most inappropriate but hilarious things I have ever heard from a professor. It's definitely a class that you can never be prepared to sit through because he always does something crazy to liven things up. (picture of him with a drawing on the chalkboard of a 'village with watchtower')

Lastly I have a business project management class where the final class objective is to work with a team to build a skyscraper made from spaghetti and marshmallows that can hold 50 sheets of paper and stand for 20 minutes. Random, right? While I can't always understand what the professor is saying, I feel like I have a great handle on the material because of my projecting experience. See, being involved really does help you academically!

Work

Ya, I still have 3 jobs...and I get in trouble almost every week because I work more than 20 hours a week between the three of them (University rules say students can only work 19.5 hours a week).

But the jobs are great. For the Center for Student Involvement, our new staff is fully trained and finally functional (without us having to check everything they do). I'm currently working with our manager to prepare a presentation for Northern Arizona University's National Collegiate Leadership Conference that will be about our development programs for student leaders at UCSD. The conference usually has an attendance of a few thousand so it's going to be exciting to get to present! I'm also working on honing my skills as a manager and learning (to my despise) how to not make mistakes in math because I'm responsible for timesheets.

With my Alumni Discovery job (okay I'm really excited to talk about this one!) I'm currently working on a project to interview ALL of the past AS Presidents (for the UCSD student government). So far I've interview 3 people, 2 lawyers and an entrepreneur, who developed amazing policy that created many of the buildings and programs that I benefit from today. Once we have 'discovered' all of the past AS Presidents, we are looking to help them develop a 'past presidents society' through which current student leaders can have mentors, a scholarship fund will come out of it, AND there will be a compilation of the history of AS based on my interviews that will be promoted with the UCSD 50th anniversary! Exciting!

Also with alumni I am working on my own publication-a sort of 'unofficial history' in which I am collecting alumni stories about fun/controversial/historical/student driven events that happened on campus and then finding related articles in the archives of the school newspaper to eventually compile into a book! I've got three sections of stories so far and am working al I can to get more going. It's a labor intensive process! Phew!

Involvement wise...

I'm the Chair for the Student Foundation Development Committee--(check out studentfoundation.ucsd.edu) which raises money from students for students, in the form of merit-based scholarships. I just got the confirmation to go ahead with a 'pub quiz' or trivia night at the campus pub at which students/faculty/staff can play some trivia for prizes with all donations going directly to student scholarships! We've raised about $300 in the past few weeks, but are looking to this event to really boost our donation total. Wish us luck!

UCSD Cares is UCSD's annual week of service/philanthropy and last year I was the chair of the student committee. We raised $13,000 for Rady Children's Hospital over the week (wahoo!) and are looking to make it even bigger this year. I though, will not be chairing the event as I feel it time to move on so next week I'll be running my final meeting as we put new chairs and committee chairs in place. It'll feel good to hand it off and see what a new group can do!

Oo and I'm on the sailing team and I'm doing to start doing Outback Adventures-guiding camping/hiking/kayaking trips for UCSD students on random weekends-my first meeting is next week!

Life

Apart from all these 'required' type things, I am living one great life. As I mentioned before I joined the UCSD Sailing team and have been able to practice once a week for the past 5 weeks (I'm getting good!). I even sailed in my first regatta and while I'm not skippering (steering and dealing with the main sail) I've been told I'm doing quite well as a crew (manning the jib, little front sail and helping with other boat-sailing tasks). It's AMAZING and I'm so so glad to be doing it.

I've also been able to go to quite a few art festivals, beer festivals, and musical performances at school and around San Diego. The culture of art and music here is incredible and i'm doing all I can do immerse myself in it this last year.

I've also gotten really into yoga in the past few months and am planning to spend Thanksgiving weekend at a yoga retreat at Joshua Tree. It'll be 4 days of camping, yoga, and hanging out in the desert and is lead by a professional instructor who teaches in San Diego. I'm getting Really excited for this trip.

hmm...what else has been going on...? I think I'm about storied out for now. I'm going to add some pictures and then post this long clip for you all to read.

I hope that life is going well for each of you and that maybe just a little bit of inspiration to do something new can travel from me to you (I seem to have so much of it lately). Best wishes and lots of love xx

Fall Quarter of my Final year

An update as to what this fall will look like for me (sorry, no pictures on this one)

Classes

I'm taking 4 and I only have class Tuesday and Thursday (how great is that, 4 day weekends)!

My classes are...

112A. Economic Theories of Political Behavior (4)

An introduction to theories of political behavior developed with the assumptions and methods of economics. General emphasis will be upon theories linking individual behavior to institutional patterns. Specific topics to be covered will include collective action, leadership, voting, and bargaining.

SOCI 137. Sociology of Food (4)

Topics include food as a marker of social indifferences (e.g., gender, class, ethnicity); the changing character of food production and distribution; food as an object of political conflict; and the symbolic meanings and riuals of food preparation and consumption

MGT 172. Business Project Management

This course covers both the process aspects of project management –– planning, scheduling methods, milestone setting, resource allocation, budgeting, and risk mitigation –– as well as the human capital management imperatives –– communication, feedback, team work and leadership. Project portfolio management theory and practice will be covered as well as R&D road mapping.

And...Intro to Acting...because why not? It's my final year of college.

So far, the classes seem incredible. The professors are a lot of fun and the subjects are things that I have a real interest in. It should be a great quarter academically.

Work

I still have 3 jobs. Campus Tours (since freshman year), Student Involvement Leadership Consultant (SILC) (since sophomore year), and Alumni Discovery Ambassador (since last year). They are probably the most incredible jobs a student could have at UCSD because I get to set my own schedule for each of them AND I get paid pretty darn well for a student job.

There are some postings about the SILC position in another blog entry so I wont go too much into it. But for each job I have amazing coworkers and the opportunity to meet and work with some of the most astounding students that UCSD has to offer.

Clubs

The only club I'm involved in this year is the Student Foundation, a foundation whose mission it is to teach UCSD student about philanthropy while raising money for the foundation so as to be able to give out student scholarships (you can read about the foundation at http://studentfoundation.ucsd.edu). I'm actually the Chair for the Development Committee, so it's my job to help educate students about philanthropy and encourage them to donate to our foundation.

I may join the sailing team if I can manage the early mornings and the drive to Mission Bay for practice. We'll have to see about that one (I really want to do it though!)

Otherwise, I have a long list of all the things I want to do during my final year in California. I haven't yet visited Yosemite National Park, nor have I driven the entirety of the Pacific Coast Highway (a drive I'm hoping to make by bicycle at some point). There are plenty of wineries left to go tasting at and a number of beaches and festivals I haven't had the chance to attend. So this year is for exploring San Diego and California because I'm seeing it as my final year here and the last time I'll have the freedom to take long weekends as I please.

And yes, I did say final year as at this point in time I intend to move (somewhere) after I graduate. I'm hoping to spend a few months volunteering abroad, then possibly settling on the East Coast or in Europe for a few years with a job (what job that is is yet to be determined).

If you have any suggestions my ears are always open!

Adams Avenue Street Fair

San Diego has a TON of different street fairs in the various 'areas' of town. Earlier this summer I went to Hillcrest's Gay Pride parade and ongoing festival, and I've been able to visit another of other neighborhoods while they had their weekly farmers markets and street fairs.

So today, Sunday September 27th we headed to Normal Heights for their annual street fair. I brought a coworker, a few of her friends, and my friend Rachel and for a few hours we perused the streets looking at jewelry, posters, crafts, hats and listening to some amazing music.

Anyone who says San Diego is boring clearly hasn't looked around hard enough!

Sailing San Diego

I absolutely love sailing and thanks to one of my friends since my freshman year, I learned that and once in a while get to go out on Mission Bay in San Diego and do so!

The last time we went was the day of my friend, Kat's, 21st birthday. It was a beautiful day and the first time we went all the way out to the ocean!

San Diego Music Awards

The San Diego Music Awards occur in September of each year and it just so happened that a friend of a friend new someone who needed some 'seat fillers' to attend the show and fill seats in the front rows so that when the video camera's scanned the crowd it looked like a big one. So there we were with free tickets to fill front row seats at the SDMA's. We loaded up my car, fondly called the 'couch car' because of its large and comfy seats, and drove to the Viejas Casino.

Some artists stood out by smashing pigs heads hanging from sticks on stage during their performance, while other stood out for their awesome music. I'd suggest a few musicians that I'm fond of if you're interested in exploring some SD music (look them up on myspace).

Metric Mastercraft

Anya Marina

Children of Nova

Gregory Page

The New Archaic

and

The Silent Comedy

Of course Jason Mraz was there as well, winning the award for album of the year (he's pretty big for a local).

SILC Training

Each year we get to start a new year with a new team in the SILC Program! SILCs are Student Involvement Leadership Consultants who work for UCSD's Center for Student Involvement doing, as our title implies, consultations for student organizations. We do everything from make reservations for meetings/events in the university event spaces to consulting students on how to get involved. At UCSD last year there were 475 different student organizations, ranging from academic orgs to dance groups to greek clubs to the Society for Creative Anachronisms (they dress up like knights in shining armor and re-enact epic battles).

I actually started working for the SILC program when it was first created 3 years ago and the past two years I had the privilege of serving as one of the 2 student Leads. This year we had an amazing 3 day training and have spent the last week, UCSD's Welcome Week, introducing all the new students to the many ways one can become involved on campus.

So here are just a few pictures of the people and things we've been doing as SILC's working the student org "One Stop" desk.

Road trip to Colorado

A friend of mine needed a copilot for a portion of the drive from San Diego to Maryland and it just so happened that the portion of the ride she needed help with was one that I have not only made a few times, but was looking for the opportunity to do again (because it meant I got to go home to both Collbran and Fort Collins!).

So Jackie and I took off on August 31st with our first stop in Vegas. After a fun and random night of clubbing (all paid for by a group of gentleman who had just returned from Iraq) we left early the next morning for Bryce Canyon, Utah. A beautiful national park (but ridiculously expensive to get in AND to camp-$45 for the night total) sunset over the main attraction was a bit uneventful but the sunrise the next morning was absolutely astounding.

We then drove to Arches National Park in eastern Utah and did a quick drive-through and photo shoot of the beautiful stone features that were there. Jackie is a photographer so we took a lot of time finding good vantage points-which meant we simply drove and they appeared around every corner. Honestly I would highly suggest for one to stop in Arches as opposed to Bryce Canyon because it's much cheaper, it's larger, it has better views, and it's just better all around.

But of course in my hurry to get to the Collbran house in time for Nana's turkey dinner we left Arches without going to Moab for gas and a mere 2 miles from the Colorado border the car sputtered to a stop. Fortunately Jackie has AAA and we are both easy-going, so we listened to music and hung out until a tow company found us with some gas (2 hours later). Eventually we made it to Collbran and had some delicious turkey and stuffing that Nana prepared.

The next day we went and hiked on the Grand Mesa near some of the Mesa lakes, then went back to the house and played with two foals in the front apple orchard. Eventually night settled in and Linda and her family came over to join us for a backyard bonfire. My boss at UCSD's Alumni Affairs, Greg Murphy, also happened to be road-tripping the same route and he and his friend joined us in Collbran for the bonfire and the place to rest their heads.

Friday of that week we embarked on the 5 hour drive to Fort Collins to mom's house and with a full gas-tank we stopped by Glenwood to shop before getting to Denver and it's Friday afternoon traffic. Finally in Fort Collins we got some Thai food for the family then spent a night out on the town. Unfortunately my sisters weren't with my mom so I didn't get to visit with them this trip home as I had expected, but I got to show Jackie the town and re-unite with one of my best friends from elementary school in Carpenter, WY-Ali Epler :).

On Sunday Jackie and I shopped until after we were supposed to leave for the airport, and once again in a hurry, we ran out of gas on E470 after a confused detour (what happened with all the toll booths, seriously?). Because we were 1/2 mile from the exit with gas, I talked Jackie into walking to the station while I stood with her dog and the car, holding a sign that merely said "GAS". (A nice woman actually did stop and pick up Jackie as she walked along the interstate and gave her a ride to the gas station and back to the car! Colorado is such a great place to be!) Though I was an hour late for my flight back to San Diego, United happily put me on a later flight and I happened to be on the same plane as a good girlfriend on her way back from Kansas City!

Getting home was a relief after many worries about making it to the next destination but it was a great trip and 8 days were spent with Jackie with many laughs even through the stickiest of situations. Yay for good trips!

(ps pictures will come soon...they were all taken on her camera and I haven't gotten to see any yet)

Solo Stay in Burnt Rancheria Campground

One of the things I've found that I can count on to re-center myself and relax is to escape to nature for a little while...so escape I did! 45 miles east of San Diego is Mt. Laguna, where I found the Burnt Rancheria haven of a campground. Using a guide book given to me by a dear friend upon her departure back to Ireland in June, I actually visited 2 other campsites and an OTV (off-terrain vehicle) state park, as well as a military base before finding a campsite that met my requirements. Quite-in the trees-good hiking nearby-and most of all seclusion from the other campers. So there I found myself and set out to set up my tent and figure out what activities were the most important to complete before sunset.

I went on a beautiful little hike overlooking a pretty vast tree-lined canyon and managed to get a bit lost when I took a side trail that lead me back to an empty campground-obviously not the busy one where my tent was parked. I did find my way back and managed to do some journal writing, calendar organizing, and guitar learning before the sun went down (I, of course, forgot to bring a lantern or even a flashlight for nightfall).

But that was all okay because I got to enjoy the incredible starry sky for a few hours instead. Man do I miss the Colorado night skies!

I went to sleep that night without the rain cover on the tent so that I could see the stars before bed and the next morning I arose with the sun and went for a hike before making my way back to San Diego. It was a beautiful evening and I was so fortunate to be able to take off on my own and do it!